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Category Archives: sarah palin

If Republicans weren’t the stupid damn party they would be nominating Palin as their choice to run against Obama! The left is terrified of her. Witness the big guns they rolled out, Tom Hanks being one of them, to attack a politician that many Republicans try to tell us is washed up, has been, quitter…notice that Hollywood hasn’t made any movies attacking Mitt , Newt or Rick…gosh is it because they don’t have plenty of material to use? Really?

Well here are the Top Ten Lies of HBO’s Game Change.

Defenders of HBO’s "Game Change" have fought back against those who criticize the politically charged film as a two-hour attack on Sarah Palin. They claim that unless a person has watched it in its entirety, they cannot judge its content or the people involved with the project.

Well, I’ve seen the entire movie, so don’t mind me while I go ahead and judge this piece of high-dollar propaganda.

"Game Change" is pretty easy to deconstruct. At its core, it’s a left-wing project designed to make one of their most hated political enemies toxic. They used people with an axe to grind to legitimize the story they want viewers to believe and help push their agenda. They also have no problem lying.

Honestly, it was difficult to narrow down this list because there were so many fabrications and distortions throughout the film, but here are the top ten lies produced by HBO.

Lie #10: HBO released a defensive statement to the press along with screeners of the film saying the project "is a balanced portrayal of the McCain/Palin campaign." Having seen the movie in its entirety, I can say that that statement is beyond absurd. There was nothing "balanced" about the story they told. As someone who has studied Palin’s career for years, I can say that I didn’t even recognize the person sold as "Governor Palin," here played by Julianne Moore.

Beyond the grotesque character assassination, there is a heavy partisan imbalance at work. "Game Change" portrays most Republicans in a bad light — everyone minus Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson), Nicolle Wallace (Sarah Paulson), Mark Wallace (Ron Livingston), and Chris Edwards (Larry Sullivan). One character refers to former Vice President Dick Cheney as "Darth Vader," while the McCain/Palin rallies depict unhinged men yelling "terrorist" and "he’s a Muslim" at the mention of Obama’s name. Then, there was the the quote they placed toward the end of the movie which had Sen. John McCain (Ed Harris) warning Palin not to get "co-opted by Limbaugh and the other extremists." None of these instances were balanced and were clearly told from a left-wing point of view.

Lie #9: Virtually every characteristic attributed to Palin in "Game Change" is false. They portray her as egotistical, ungracious, demanding, stupid, forgetful and, cruelest of all, mentally unstable. They do show her as a loving mother, even though they have her go into "catatonic stupors" when separated from her children. Even when they’re trying to be nice they’re mean. I don’t know Palin personally, but I know people who do. I have never heard any stories that fit the descriptions listed above; in fact, I’ve heard just the opposite.

An egotistical person wouldn’t put her state’s well-being before her own political career. An ungracious person wouldn’t spend her time making long phone calls to supporters, giving them shout-outs at rallies, or spending countless time shaking their hands on rope-lines. It also appears as though Alec Baldwin didn’t get the lefty memo. In October of 2008, after meeting her on the set on SNL, Baldwin describes Palin as "polite" and "gracious." Oops!

"Game Change" also depicts Palin as highly forgetful. Around the 70 minute mark, Mark Wallace tells Steve Schmidt that Palin couldn’t remember "any" of the information he used to prep her for the debate. As it turns out, another Democrat didn’t get the memo. In 2008, former editor in chief of Ms. magazine, Elaine Lafferty wrote:

I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts.

Lafferty also said Palin was "smart" and "more than a quick study." She, however, was not interviewed by "Game Change" screenwriter Danny Strong for the film. Seriously, if you think Palin is stupid, just read her emails. Dumb, mentally unstable people prone to falling into "catatonic stupors" don’t generally work their way up to governor. She did, and she did it all on her own. From top to bottom, the "Palin" character is absolute fiction. She is nothing more than a left-wing day dream of who they wish Palin was.

Lie #8: "Game Change" depicts Palin as unwilling to go on stage with Jeb Bradley because he is pro-choice. At the 92 minute mark of the film, Palin tells a staffer:

There’s no way I’m going on stage with anyone who’s pro-choice.

When HBO sends out statements telling people that they "ensure" the "historical accuracy" of the research they conduct, they’re lying. If this woman refused to go on stage with anyone because they’re pro-choice, why did she attend rallies with Joe Lieberman in Pennsylvania and Florida during the campaign? Why did she also allow the L.A. President of NOW to introduce her at yet another rally during the campaign in question? Palin doesn’t ostracize people for having a different opinion than she does. Frankly, that’s more in line with behavior I have come to expect from the left.

Welcome to Bookworm and NoisyRoom Readers…and thanks to Right Wing News for linking. Gonna be walking around with a big head for the rest of the day with all this linkage! Thank you!

Obviously we are in a recovery eh? After all what else could all of these indicators mean?

Inquiring minds are watching a plunge in Petroleum Distillates and Gasoline usage.Reader Tim Wallace writes Hello Mish As I have been telling you recently, there is some unprecedented data coming out in petroleum distillates, and they slap me in the face and tell me we have some very bad economic trends going on, totally out of line with such things as the hopium market – I mean stock market. This past week I actually had to reformat my graphs as the drop off peak exceeded my bottom number for reporting off peak – a drop of ALMOST 4,000,000 BARRELS PER DAY off the peak usage in our past for this week of the year.

The U.S. imports and exports petroleum products, but the net result is imports of around 8 million barrels a day.The U.S. imports about 10.5 MBD and exports almost 3 MBD for a net import total of 7.5 MBD. The secular decline in net imports from the 2006 top is consistent with the view that consumption has declined as a reflection of economic activity.

Some more alarming news…well alarming if you are just getting aboard the “Holy Shit” what have those bumbleheads in DC done to our economy!

Mark W.also forwarded these charts ofElectrical power consumption. Not only has electrical consumption never recovered the levels of mid-2008, it peaked in mid-2011 and has begun a sharp decline in late 2011

And the last chart from Charles Hugh Smith showing a comparison in electrical consumption between other recessions and this one, notice how deep this one is? More charts follow in case you are still clinging to the dream that the economy is mending.

I marked recent recessions on a long-term chart of electrical consumption to show that the deep recession of 1981-83 barely registered, while the recessions of 1990-91 and 2000-2002 are essentially noise

Taking a look back to 2003 you can see that we have still not reached that level in shipping.

Another shipping index Harpers shows much the same thing.

Lets take a look at retail sales adjusted for the devaluation of the dollar…otherwise known as inflation. Oopsy that is still around the levels seen back in 2006.

Finally all of these charts and others point to a very sick economy. One that won’t be fixed with smoke and mirrors. What is at stake if we don’t fix this economy? Take a look at what our unemployment rate would look like if we still calculated it the same way it was done back in Reagan’s day before Clinton juiced the methods for calculating it around to make himself look good enough to re-elect. From Shadowstats a quick summary on changes, then below some charts on unemployment. From John Williams at Shadowstats.

The popularly followed unemployment rate was 5.5% in July 2004, seasonally adjusted. That is known as U-3, one of six unemployment rates published by the BLS. The broadest U-6 measure was 9.5%, including discouraged and marginally attached workers.

Up until the Clinton administration, a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year. As of July 2004, the less-than-a-year discouraged workers total 504,000. Adding in the netherworld takes the unemployment rate up to about 12.5%.

The Clinton administration also reduced monthly household sampling from 60,000 to about 50,000, eliminating significant surveying in the inner cities. Despite claims of corrective statistical adjustments, reported unemployment among people of color declined sharply, and the piggybacked poverty survey showed a remarkable reversal in decades of worsening poverty trends.

More specifically…

And finally the latest report from John Williams over at Shadowstats regarding unemployment.

In 1994, during the Clinton Administration, “discouraged workers” — those who had given up looking for a job because there were no jobs to be had — were redefined so as to be counted only if they had been “discouraged” for less than a year. This time qualification defined away the long-term discouraged workers. The remaining short-term discouraged workers (less than one year) are included in U.6.

Adding the SGS estimate of excluded long-term discouraged workers back into the total unemployed and labor force, unemployment — more in line with common experience as estimated by the SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure — declined to about 22.2% in January 2011 from 22.4% in December. The SGS estimate generally is built on top of the official U.6 reporting and tends to follow its relative monthly movements and will suffer some of the current seasonal-adjustment woes afflicting the base series. See the Alternate Data tab for a graph and more detail.

As discussed in earlier writings, while an unemployment rate around 22% might raise questions in terms of a comparison with the purported peak unemployment in the Great Depression (1933) of 25%, the SGS level likely is about as bad as the peak unemployment seen in the 1973 to 1975 recession. The Great Depression unemployment rate was estimated well after the fact, with 27% of those employed working on farms. Today, less that 2% work on farms. Accordingly, for purposes of a Great Depression comparison, I would look at the estimated peak nonfarm unemployment rate in 1933 of 34% to 35%.

Week Ahead. Given the unfolding reality of an intensifying double-dip recession and more-serious inflation problems than generally are anticipated by the financial markets, risks to reporting will tend towards higher-than-expected inflation and weaker-than-expected economic reporting in the months ahead. Increasingly, previously unreported economic weakness should show up in prior-period revisions.

Probably need to grab some reality sooner rather than later regarding our economic situation. We need to cut spending drastically, cut taxes drastically and cut interfering with business’s ability to produce. We have no more slack in our economy…sadly we have no politicians with the will power to even start doing any of that!

Charles Hugh Smith thinks we are well past simple easy fixes. Given the expectations of free stuff from the major voting blocks of the Democratic party how can one disagree with Charles?

With Obama’s apparent strategy leaning towards exploring every single way to collapse the United States, it isn’t a surprise that we are bailing out Europe. Ah, all the wonderful leftists love to crow about this or that European fashion, ridiculous pensions, life time employment, huge bureaucracies, nanny state, check, check, check, check and check, leftists in the US want all of that! Don’t worry though because it is the rare conservative indeed who will speak out against the “safety net” indeed finding a so-called right wing politician who will admit forthrightly that he intends to cut spending is akin to finding a leftist questioning the idea that someone’s “needs” trumps my freedom. (This makes Conservative NJ Governor Chris Christie a real up and comer and Ron Paul a saint) We are going straight to hell and the goddamn hand basket is in flames! Anyways Zero Hedge as usual is all the way around the story. Really if you aren’t reading Zero Hedge, The Market Ticker ®, Financial Armageddon, Calculated Risk, Dollar Collapse and a few others then all of what is happening is a big ass shock to you. Being surprised is only fun for your birthday.

We are rapidly approaching a point where it simply won’t matter whether the politicians and their needy minions want to cut this or that “safety net”…we have outgrown our ability to pay for all we have promised. As economist Robert Samuelson points out in a recent article we are witnessing the Welfare State’s Death Spiral. And this European Bailout is the sort of dumb move, that will accelerate our final reckoning. What is hilarious and indicative of Obama’s desire to destroy this country is that at the VERY the same time we rushing to adopt all of the sorts of policies that put Europe in that position. Weee!

Well guess what: with about $500 billion in liquidity swaps about to hit the asset side of the ledger (that’s a conservative estimate based on the last time the Fed went full bore on bailing out Europe, and sorry, that European bailout does not come cheap), Excess Reserves (fed liabilities) are about to skyrocket by a comparable amount to match the assets. And here is the double whammy: $500 billion in new excess reserves earning 0.25% for holder banks, means US banks are about to earn an additional $1.25 billion a year risk-free courtesy of US taxpayers, who already are getting the shaft by paying more for gas thanks to the privilege of having bailed out Europe and drowned the world in new and unprecedented gobs of excess liquidity! Simply stated, the Greek “bailout” is a roundabout way of funneling over another extra billion to US banks! Direct cost to US taxpayers to bailout Europe via IMF: $50 billion; Indirect cost to fund incremental bank excess reserves: $1.25 billion; The joy of being raped daily by the Fed-Wall Street complex and assuring another year of record Wall Street bonuses: priceless. Some things money can’t buy. For everything else there are trillions in Federal Reserve Notes appearing each and every day out of thin air. Fed Pretends It Is Preparing To Soak Up Excess Reserves, Even As Currency Swaps Are Sure To Add About $500 Billion To Fed’s Assets | zero hedge (emphasis mine)

It should be remembered that in any public demonstration of activism, the percentage of participation — from within the larger group of like-minded constituents — is not only typically single digits, but down at one or two percent.

If you can muster a million actual people, physically present, there will be AT LEAST between 50 and 100 people who would have gone or wanted to go but were prevented from so doing by logistics. And current estimates put the number in attendance at two million or more.

Meaning that their sentiments are shared by anywhere from 100 million to 200 million people. Of whom, I would reckon the solid majority are registered voters.

If I am a member of either House of Congress, these numbers tell me something about my future, and give me pause to contemplate the weight of the two primary threats to my career: “shall I succumb to the blackmail and extortion from the Administration, or cave in to the wishes of my constituents?”

Those who (laughingly) “represent” us in Congress are vulnerable for the oldest of reasons: they do not have clean hands.

You cannot threaten an honest man. You have no leverage. The best you can do is simple thuggery. And against a man of integrity and courage, you don’t even have that.

All but the most arrogant among our legislators have to know, now, the mind of those they presume to represent.

All but the most hubris-polluted will know that the usual shrug-and-dismiss protocol obtains no traction.

Even with the abetting silence of the Fourth Estate, they must know they have no cover.

What remains to be seen is who among them shall offer contrition and seek reconciliation with those whose hand holds the ballot.

I suspect — if what seems actually IS — that those who bluster that it wasn’t their fault, or that they didn’t know, or, indeed, that they were right (in spite of the evidence) will be sitting out the remainder of the game from the next election forward.

I only pray there are enough people left who don’t want the job to replace those husks of rotting souls who have believed that their election was the winning ticket to the ultimate privilege lottery.

Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care —

Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.

So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.

I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.

And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

So how do you — how do we deal with it?

This is where it gets ugly…and just as lawyers have been trained to do from the beginning of time he does not allow himself to be cornered into saying that these conversations, guided by panels made up of Doctors, Scientists and errr ethicists, will not be voluntary. The elephant in the room is the idea that this “Death Panel” will not have the power to make blanket rules about circumstances which the government should not fund.

I am from the Government and I am here to help.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels.And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now. After the Great Recession – An Interview With President Obama – NYTimes.com

Here are some choice quotes from the guy Obama might tap to be on an independent group giving guidance to the sick. Take it away Johnny! All of the following material is borrowed from the absolutely remarkable work by Zombietime blog.

Harrison Brown’s most remarkable book, The Challenge of Man’s Future (Viking, 1954; reprinted by Westview, 1984), was published more than three decades ago. By the time I read it as a high school student a few years later, the book had been widely acclaimed as a monumental survey of the human prospect, illuminated through analysis of the interaction of population, technology, and the resources of the physical world. I knew even before high school that science and technology held special interest for me, and I suppose I also had some prior interest in the larger human condition. But The Challenge of Man’s Future pulled these interests together for me in a way that transformed my thinking about the world and about the sort of career I wanted to pursue. I have always suspected that I am not the only member of my generation whose aspirations and subsequent career were changed by this book of Harrison Brown’s.

What was so special about the book? Perhaps most impressive at the time was the combination of audacity and erudition with which Brown wove together insights from anthropology, history, economics, geochemistry, biology, and the study of technology to provide a coherent, multidimensional picture of his subject—how humans have provided themselves with the physical ingredients of existence in the past, their prospects for doing so in the future, and the connections between these matters and the sociopolitical dimensions of the human condition. As a demonstration of the power of (and necessity for) an interdisciplinary approach to global problems, the book was a tour de force.

And who is it exactly that Holdren admires so much? Well Harrison is a swell character. Here are some quotes from the book that Holdren claims had such an impact on his choice for his life’s work.

Page 105 of The Challenge of Man’s Future by Harrison Brown

First, man can discourage unfit persons from breeding. Second, he can encourage breeding by those persons who are judged fit on the basis of physical and mental testing and examinations of the records of their ancestors.

Priorities for artificial insemination could be given to healthy women of high intelligence whose ancestors possessed no dangerous genetic defects. Conversely, priorities for abortions could be given to less intelligent persons of biologically unsound stock.

Such steps would undoubtedly contribute substantially to a slowing down of species deterioration. But it is clear that they would by no means be sufficient. A broad eugenics program would have to be formulated which would aid in the establishment of policies that would encourage able and healthy persons to have several offspring and discourage the unfit from breeding at excessive rates.

Here is Obama’s science advisor Holdren again lauding the perversion of life that Brown represents. We fought a bloody war against another group of maniacs who thought they knew who was fit and who wasn’t. Now we are putting this maniacs into office. Take it away Obama Science advisor Holdren.

What was so special about the book? Perhaps most impressive at the time was the combination of audacity and erudition with which Brown wove together insights from anthropology, history, economics, geochemistry, biology, and the study of technology to provide a coherent, multidimensional picture of his subject—how humans have provided themselves with the physical ingredients of existence in the past, their prospects for doing so in the future, and the connections between these matters and the sociopolitical dimensions of the human condition. As a demonstration of the power of (and necessity for) an interdisciplinary approach to global problems, the book was a tour de force.

Here are some more choice quotes from this “Tour de Force” The Challenge of Man’s Future by Harrison Brown.

In the first place, it is amply clear that population stabilization and a world composed of completely independent sovereign states are incompatible. Populations cannot be stabilized by agreement any more than levels of armament can be stabilized by agreement. And, as in the latter case, a world authority is needed which has the power of making, interpreting, and enforcing, within specified spheres, laws which are directly applicable to the individual. Indeed, population stabilization is one of the two major problems with which a world government must necessarily concern itself.

Given a world authority with jurisdiction over population problems, the task of assessing maximum permissible population levels on a regional basis need not be prohibitively difficult.

We are handing our lives over to a bunch of folks who think it is ok to decide who lives and who dies. We are handing our lives over to a bunch of folks who further think that there are too many humans on the planet. We are handing our lives to folks whose friends have talked about eliminating millions because they hold the wrong philosophy on life…take it away Weathermen.

The title of this post is a partial quote from FBI Operative and Army veteran Larry Grathwohl who infiltrated the Weather Underground combined with an observation of my wife. It was question to Billy Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn and other Weathermen during a conversation about what they envisioned the United States would look like after they won the war. Yes he confirms that Billy Ayers, a person Obama called a guy in his neighborhood, was in the room when this was said: (thank you to Bob Owens from Confederate Yankee for a terrific article and to Pajama Media for hosting it!)

I asked, Well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists? And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.

And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.

And when I say eliminate, I mean kill.

Twenty-five million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

And they were dead serious.

So when you laugh at Sarah Palin…maybe it is almost like whistling past the graveyard eh? Cause the folks we have managed to put into power are just this dangerous.

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care. The President made light of these concerns. He said:

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore….It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context. Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual … or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility… or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones…. If it’s all about alleviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6] As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive — money — to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist. Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes: Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives…. It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen … should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens….An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]

Sarah taking it to that bastard in the White House! You Betcha!

PALIN: Thats how I feel! I feel like and I think that more and more constituents are going to open their eyes now and open their ears to hear what is really going on and realize ok Maybe we didnt have a good way of expressing that, or articulating that message of here is what America could potentially become if we grow government to such a degree that we cannot pay for it and we have to borrow money from other countries, some countries that dont necessarily like America.

And this many months into the new administration, quite disappointed, quite frustrated with not seeing those actions to rein in spending, slow down the growth of government. Instead Sean it is the complete opposite. Its expanding at such a large degree that if Americans arent paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize.

HANNITY: Socialism?

PALIN: Well, that is where we are headed. That is where we have to be blunt enough and candid enough and honest enough with Americans to let them know that if we keep going down these roads nationalizing many of our services, our projects, our businesses, yes that is where we would head. And that is why Americans have to be paying attention. And we have to have our voices heard. And ultimately it need to be our will, the American peoples will imposed on Washington, instead of the other way around.

Here is EXACTLY what she predicted in 2008 in her acceptance speech. Sarah got it exactly right.

This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word "victory" except when he’s talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the roar of the crowd fades away … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot  what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger … take more of your money … give you more orders from Washington … and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy … our opponent is against producing it.

Victory in Iraq is finally in sight … he wants to forfeit.

Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay … he wants to meet them without preconditions.

Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America … he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights? Government is too big … he wants to grow it.

Congress spends too much … he promises more.

Taxes are too high … he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific.

The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes … raise payroll taxes … raise investment income taxes … raise the death tax … raise business taxes … and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that’s now opened for business  like millions of others who run small businesses.

German Chancellor Merkel spoke out against the policy of the Central Banks of the United States (Federal Reserve), Great Britain and the EU. When a German Chancellor speaks out against the policies of the Central Banks of the world we would be wise to listen.

Aides say Ms Merkel’s concern about the expanding remits of the Fed and the Bank of England is genuine. She does not blame the implosion of the subprime mortgage market for the economic crisis. She does not see securitisation as the culprit. Rather, she thinks the loosening of monetary policy under Alan Greenspan’s Fed chairmanship fuelled the creation of asset price bubbles and encouraged excessive leverage within and beyond the financial sector.

This risky policy, she thinks, was supported by a US government that also rejected any calls – including from Germany when Berlin was chairing the Group of Eight industrial nations in 2007 – for tighter regulation of financial markets. Ms Merkel "sees the huge amounts of liquidity being pumped into financial systems with some concern. She is worried that some of the unconventional action being deployed by central banks cannot be easily reversed," says one confidant. "We do not want to be fuelling a new bubble. Another crisis like this one and the west will be wiped out." FT.com / UK – Merkel makes a mark

Why is she so worried about loosening of the monetary policy under the Fed? INFLATION! The Germans have an intimate knowledge of what happens when inflation ravages a country.

The Feds actions are driven by exactly the same sort of short range thinking that has destroyed specific sectors of the US economy. GM signs a labor agreement 50 years ago because they didnt wonder what might happen down the road if they had some rough spots. And now a 100 year old company is taken over by the Government. Short Range Thinking will be the death of us.

Sometimes you simply have to accept some pain to avoid the death blow. GM should have said no then and dealt with the inevitable strikes then and they would be alive now. We should have never allowed the Government to remove the shackles we had around it in the form of our currency being backed by gold. At the point we allowed that, it was irresistible that the Government would inflate its way out of debts and one day destroy this country. We as a people demanded more and more from the Government and corrupt politicians who knew better were more than willing to give it to us. We demanded that taxes NOT be raised and corrupt politicians were only too willing to not raise taxes. Well now the butchers bill has come due.

After all if only 8.9% of the folks are unemployed like the Government says than why is this happening? Could the Government be full of shit about the unemployment numbers? Nah, the Government never lies. They would never change the way unemployment is calculated to make themselves look better.

Well let me just say that if you are interested in the economy and you don’t have a subscription to John Williams website then you are missing the real story.

JOHN WILLIAMS SHADOW GOVERNMENT STATISTICS FLASH UPDATE May 8, 2009 __________ Better-Than-Expected April Jobs Report Had A Bad Odor to It 539,000 Jobs Loss was 605,000 Net of Revisions, 491,000 Net of CSFB Birth-Death Bias Showed Unusual Jump in April __________ PLEASE NOTE:

The next planned Flash Update will follow the release of the April retail sales report on Wednesday, May 13th, with a subsequent update following the April CPI report on Friday, May 15th.  Best wishes to all, John Williams CBS news radio this morning (May 8th) was headlining and hyping a likely improvement in the jobs picture, well before the April employment report was released. Where the White House formally received the employment detail after the markets closed on Thursday (and probably had a good sense of the number a week before), todays reporting looked very much like an orchestrated event. News organizations usually are pretty conservative about touting market-moving reports in advance of a release.

Continuing a pattern seen in the last seven monthly payroll reports, todays estimates included negative revisions to the previously-report February and March payroll changes (see the Reporting/Market Focus in the most recent SGS Newsletter No. 50, for further background on this indication of flawed reporting), but the Concurrent Seasonal Factor Bias (CSFB) reversed in April (see below). There also was an unusual surge in birth-death modeling bias. Separately, unusual seasonal adjustments were apparent in the unemployment report, which, unlike the payroll reporting, was exactly as bad as expected by consensus forecasts.